Rapiere
Posts: 64
2/18/2015
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I really like the game, yes I do, but the more I play it, the more I see its flaws. That's perhaps normal and expected. This user, Boink, on Steam hits the nail(s) several time I believe:
I can suggest some reasons - but note that I actually like Sunless Sea quite a lot, it's just not quite there in some ways.
1) Port report grind & balancing. Everyone understands that resources / terror should be tough to manage to create an atmosphere. The problem is that this is done via incredibly strict economic management, rather than event / engine / narrative. It's a bit galling that it's economics, not sea monsters, that causes more anxiety. I'd be far happier if I could make echoes and die to a surfacing kraken (when that tentacle sprouts out of the ocean and takes a single sailor, *shrug*, I have 9 spare) rather than because I didn't do a direct A -> B route for another port report.
2) Leading to the AI / zea beasts / pirates. They're just not that much of a threat, they don't have many attack routines / behaviors and exerienced players treat them like wandering goody bags. Once you've played a couple of lives, well... zero challenge / worry. In fact, due to #1, not having beasties to feed off is actually worse than having them spawn. The spawns are also static (terrible). There's a single exception: .
3) The world is weirdly static. The lighting is great, but there's no weather barring some fluffy white / yellow stuff that is fog, snow or dust (fog.. you'd think the first thing on the drawing board would be decent fog). There's no storms, lightning, thunderspouts, ghost ships etc. Barring static whirlpools, the zea offers no dynamic threats: all the weather can do is reduce your speed. I understand the engine limitations, but it's jarring to have wandering zea monsters / pirates, but nothing else.
4) The individual island stories are fantastic, but they're far too self-contained (independent writers is both a blessing and a curse here). There's no real world building because so few of your choices have impact (). Even when you've finished an island story, mostly there's little impact even at that port (notable exceptions: ). Likewise there's the fundamentals of a political system to support various factions, but it's woefully lacking in content (esp. regarding spies). Given the focus of the game, I expected more.
5) Balancing / pacing. Everyone knows about farming sunlight. And I understand that the game issupposed to play out that a captain only has a chance of finishing a couple of islands before terror and the zeas drives her to ruin. But... that doesn't happen. Irem's market alone is basically a 7-11 for any item ingame which encourages mass echo farming. Past a certain point the difficulty curve just crumbles and you can never die (unless you choose to via an ending to gather a legacy). i.e. at first you'll die loads and never get anywhere, then you'll crack it and never again die. Oh, and gaming the SAL system is incredibly easy.
6) Terror / psychological horror never feels that threatening. It's far, far too easy to remove and is even beneficial to raise in some cases (). It becomes too cheap to cure, and has no lasting effects. I spent more time worried about fuel / supplies / echos than I did terror. A much slower gain, but with serious serious penalties and effects and less chances to reduce it would have been more effective. e.g. "can I afford to raise my terror past 50 just for this chance to finish this story" rather than "whelp, I've hit 85 terror, better hit London and then have some family time and do a couple more things in town and it'll be back to the low 20's".
7) Your character never really changes. By this I mean that you can pick up some semi-permanent menaces / effects, but it's all too easy to wipe the slate clean. I was expecting some kind of 'negative perk' <> terror mechanic. e.g. fail a terror event past 75? character must pass a challenge or become nyctophobic and turning your lamp off at sea raises terror faster; fail a combat challenge on an island, become labelled a coward and crew costs soar. That kind of thing (and yes, I've played the call of cthulhu tabletop rpg, the idea isn't my own). Likewise, having island stories give beneficial perks would stave off a lot of the disappointing feeling of "well, that story was fantastic and I'm stoked that I completed it with positive outcomes to the challenges, but the rewards are just echoes".
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+3
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Diptych
Administrator
Posts: 3493
2/18/2015
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The game came out less than two weeks ago! The devs would like to implement modding support, but they're a small team and they have a million things to do in the post-release madness. Hopefully, in time, it'll be something they can devote their resources too!
(Speaking more generally - some folks think the game is too easy, and some think it's too hard. No game's going to please everyone in every way, so those are both valid viewpoints. But, these forums are characterised by a tone of politeness and mutual respect, and I think everyone should maintain that. After all, we're literally just discussing having fun and playing games - there's no need to get heated, or cutting, or... anything else that occurs in the cookery process. Cheers!)
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Sir Frederick, the Libertarian Esotericist. Lord Hubris, the Bloody Baron.
Juniper Brown, the Ill-Fated Orphan. Esther Ellis-Hall, the Fashionable Fabian.
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+4
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Shadow
Posts: 49
2/18/2015
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The review is only accurate in a handful of areas.
Port reports aren't meant to be ground, but as a mechanic to recoup some of the travel expenses, I suppose it could be improved upon. It feels perhaps rather one-dimensional to mandatorily have to pick up all the reports along the way in every single journey.
The main problem as far as monsters are concerned is that the players themselves don't have many tricks to play, so even if the baddies had an larger repertoire (and they do, but assume even larger), the players still have very limited means to counter them. I didn't play much before the combat overhaul of the Steel update, but I understand it was possible to accrue a whole bunch of abilities before. Abilities which are now either automatically integrated to certain weapons (i.e. flensing attacks) or apparently vestigial.
Bonus comment about the wandering tentacle, which I think is only liable to appear if your terror is high enough: it hit me once after a rather disastrous Godfall run, taking one of my three remaining crewmen as I limped to the Khanate. Made me sweat alright, so it's not necessarily shrug-worthy.
I agree that the world is quite static, but not from a weather perspective. That seems fine. It doesn't feel alive in the sense there's very limited interaction with and between factions. The Khanate, for instance, seems huge and is supposed to be the direct antagonist to London, yet narratively it's little more than a couple of shops, a reduced set of random events and a fleeting resources for quests gotten elsewhere.
Where are the Khanate-borne quests and characters? Why's my only significant interaction with the Leopard and the Taimen bribing them to gain access to their small merchant quarter and reduce local suspicion, product of my antics?
The Supremacy mechanic seems like a good foundation to build upon, as far as politics, international interaction and conflict are concerned, but it seems quite skeletal at the moment. The reviewer's right about that.
He misses the mark quite considerably when he establishes a link between the unbalanced sunlight smuggling and Irem's shop, which is far from a 7-11 if you don't abuse sunlight. Everything there costs secrets, and Irem sells secrets for 999e, so I presume that's the gateway he identified. But it's only remotely accessible as such if you wildly abuse sunlight trade. Once that's tweaked, that'll be the end of his point.
Of course, he also says that shop encourages echo farming, but that's not really the case as the prices are pretty excessive in normal circumstances, and there's cheaper alternative ways to get most anything Irem sells.
As for terror, I don't know, I feel it does its job pretty well. It is a limiter mechanic for your voyages, yes, and I think Mangrove has good terror management options (and a certain other place if you bring coffee), but I think the reviewer's again analyzing the subject under the lense of the virtually unlimited wealth sunlight abuse provides. Yes, sure, if you have bottomless pockets, many places "buy" your terror.
And that there's good places to manage terror on long voyages doesn't mean you start the game with that knowledge. In a way, the guy's complaining the game's too easy once you know practically everything there is to know, which is a given. Any game's easy if you're aware of all its tricks and can take advantage of them.
Could be harder at that point, maybe, but it'd be difficult to tweak that without negatively affecting less experienced players. But I get the feeling this guy digged into the wiki and forums too earnestly, and doesn't realize how much that spoiled the game for him.
Anyway, overall, Sunless Sea sets the stage for an amazing world, but it's going to take several expansions for the game to feel properly fleshed out, polished and hopefully alive.
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In Her Enduring Majesty's Service
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Impish Axile
Posts: 50
2/18/2015
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Yeah, considering terror not a problem and fuel a huge problem are pretty sure signs of someone zailing with their lights on all the time.
Personally, I tend to go lights-off, not really to save money (i also spam Full Power constantly as soon as I'm in a ship with an Avid Suppressor), but because i like long trips and bringing less fuel means more precious, precious hold space.
I do wish there were more variation in how you're treated based on your actions; pretty much everywhere it's just "you're locked out of everything" vs "you're treated like any other London zee-captain". It kinda puts a damper on roleplaying when your fiercely jingoist law-and-order god-bless-Her-Enduring-Majesty-and-the-Dawn-Machine captain and your soulless cannibal cuthroat smuggler captain and your idealistic revolutionary captain are all treated BASICALLY the same in London, and almost everywhere?
It'd take a LOT of rewriting the same scenes, though, and i would prefer new content to endless slight variations on existing content, so i can't complain too much.
Things like Khanate or New Sequencer ships not attacking you when you've been heavily supporting them would be a very welcome change, though.
Also, some actual Admiralty ships patrolling very near London / Port Carnelian, that can trigger additional contraband searches, attack people with very high Suspicion, and are replaced with new sequencer ships / khanate ships / pirates or monsters when the Supremacy changes would be neat too, though probably a lot more coding, and players not having THAT much influence on the Neath also makes sense.
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+1
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Skanderbander
Posts: 1
2/18/2015
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Oh man can we not cross-post from Steam? I just came over here so I don't have to deal with all that.
1)" I'd be far happier if I could make echoes and die to a surfacing kraken "
Instadeath events? really?
2) "Once you've played a couple of lives, well... zero challenge / worry."
oh thanks hardcore vidjagame player, zero challenge. well I'm on my fifth captain and it's not zero challenge for me. I bought a game of exploration not twitch combat. I wouldn't mind if they went back to the turn-based option but it's, you know, POSSIBLE TO DIE TO A STARTING ENEMY.
3) " There's no storms, lightning, thunderspouts, ghost ships etc."
wtf. 'there's not enough weather in the game'. it's a hand-painted world. it's like complaining Baldurs Gate didn't have enough background animations
4) "The individual island stories are fantastic, but they're far too self-contained (independent writers is both a blessing and a curse here). "
apart from the ones that aren't. yeah, this could be better, but there are like a dozen crossover stories. Two dozen. Also the independent writers did what like ten of the islands? Failbetter did most of it.
5) "And I understand that the game issupposed to play out that a captain only has a chance of finishing a couple of islands before terror and the zeas drives her to ruin. But... that doesn't happen."
BLLFAHFHAF what is this guy trolling or does he not even READ the forums. it happened to ME and it happened to THOUSANDS of people. Yes I know you're all better at games than me GO YOU
6) "whelp, I've hit 85 terror, better hit London and then have some family time and do a couple more things in town and it'll be back to the low 20's"."
Yuh no uh huh. I played the game back when Terror had more teeth and boy am I glad they dialled it back. You notice there's no 'boost Terror' mods on the mod thread. It's a handicap you have to handle by playing cautiously. You want permanent crippling effects, go play darkest dungeon
7) "character must pass a challenge or become nyctophobic and turning your lamp off at sea raises terror faster; fail a combat challenge on an island, become labelled a coward and crew costs soar. "
oh he has been playing darkest dungeon.
well that sounds like FUN. A nyctophobic character in a game where everything is dark. a permanent flaw that makes the echo grind HARDER which he just said in 1 he didn't want. Well hey maybe you could pay to remove them? except that would make the error grind HARDER again
"well idk just some like psychoses and things the devs can work out how to make that fun" right.
tl;dr: 'the game is fine but it should be like 3d or something and there should be MOAR STORY because there isn't enough story. Also it's easy if you're a real vidjagame player'. Thanks but no.
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